Clint Eastwood as a young actor in Sergio Leone's in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"

Is he an actor of almost comically limited talent, or a movie star of smartly economical style?

A director of rushed carelessness, or a filmmaker of subtle reserve?

A stalwart right-winger or an open-minded progressive?

Yes.

A simple man full of interesting complexities, Clint Eastwood contains all those contradictions. And so do our attitudes toward him.

The artist once derided as a popcorn fascist is now seen as a Hollywood elder statesman; the cowboy conservative is now quoted as an opponent of the Iraq war, and supporter of gay rights.

Is it Clint Eastwood who’s changed, or us?

Yes, again.

And in a year marked by a renewed interest in the man, and a resurgent career — with a DVD set saluting his classic Westerns, another biography detailing his life, and a new film, "Invictus," poised for an Oscar run — it’s a good time to ask how.

Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born May 31, 1930, in San Francisco — and, at 11 pounds,6 ounces, quickly nicknamed "Samson" by the nurses. But as Marc Eliot’s new bio, "American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood" (Harmony) relates, it was the only remarkable thing about him.

Like millions of others, his parents struggled constantly, the family moving up and down the state, his father searching for work. "I can’t remember how many schools I went to," Eastwood said later. "I do remember we moved so much that I made very few friends."

Ironically, it was only the war that brought a kind of peace for the Eastwoods, as the defense-plant boom brought jobs for both parents. But it was the ’30s their son would remember, and his father’s stubborn go-it-alone pride ("No one gave us a handout") that he would revere.

The teenage Clint Jr., though, showed no such strength of character. He yawned his way through high school; after graduation he worked some dead-end jobs and spent all his free time in jazz clubs and jalopies. "Basically," he said, "I was a drifter, a bum."

When the Korean War began, he was also prime draft material. Except then, a force his friends called "Clint Luck" came into play.

Noting that he had listed "swimming" on his induction papers as a special skill, the officers at Fort Ord made him an instructor; once on base, Eastwood finagled a bartending job at the noncommissioned officers’ club. And so he sat out the war.

It was all pretty sweet. It was about to get sweeter.

For quite a few dollars more

Through his work on the base, Eastwood met a couple of young actors, celebrity draftees assigned to public relations. It was a congenial crowd, and after his discharge Eastwood stayed in touch, drifting down to Los Angeles and getting a job pumping gas.

Then, one day, a friend brought a producer over. It was 1954, and every studio was looking for the next generation of leading men. The executive took an appraising look at the tall, smirking pump jockey, and told him to come in for a screen test.

Within a month, Clint Eastwood was an actor with a contract at Universal, for $75 a week.

It was another case of "Clint Luck," and a huge break for a 24-year-old vet with no real direction. It was also — for a one-year-married husband with a roving eye — a huge temptation. But, when he wasn’t chasing starlets, Eastwood learned his craft.

Pictures like "Francis in the Navy" or "Tarantula" didn’t offer many opportunities, though. After 18 months, the studio fired him, claiming he wasn’t attractive enough to be a movie star. (According to one expert, his Adam’s apple was too big.)

The next four years would be spent hustling for small parts — and, in between auditions, digging swimming pools for those actors whose contracts had been renewed.

But Eastwood had one last piece of luck due him. His agent heard about a new Western on CBS, "Rawhide." The producers had their lead, Eric Fleming, but still needed to cast a young hothead. They asked Eastwood if he’d done any cowboy movies.

Associated PressClint Eastwood arrives at the ninth annual AFI Awards for motion picture and television programs at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles earlier this year.

The good news was that he had, "Ambush at Cimarron Pass" ("the lousiest Western ever made," Eastwood admitted later). The even-better news was, the producers hadn’t seen it. So they just nodded, sent him down to wardrobe, and did a screen test. And they liked what they saw.

The next year, 1959, "Rawhide" premiered — and Clint Eastwood emerged as a star. He’s held onto the job description ever since.

It was a diverse group of actors but, in 1964, they had two things in common. They had all been sent a script for a new Italian Western called "A Fistful of Dollars." And they had all turned it down.

Eventually the script went to Eric Fleming, who rejected it too. So, desperate, the director sent it to Fleming’s co-star. And, after everyone else had said no, Clint Eastwood said yes.

A samurai fan, he liked that it was a sneaky remake of "Yojimbo." He didn’t mind that the director was a relative newcomer. And although the $15,000 salary wasn’t much, well, hell — at least he’d get a trip to Europe out of it.

The film revolutionized the genre.

Instead of John Ford’s long shots, emphasizing the majesty of the landscape, Sergio Leone’s extreme close-ups underlined the ugliness humans had brought to it. Instead of Howard Hawks’ stories about gentleman warriors, Leone focused on double-dealing vermin.

Only Eastwood’s character — "The Man With No Name" — strode through it all unperturbed. Encased in a serape, a cigarillo smoldering in his mouth like a fuse, he was not so much incorruptible as inhuman — a walking, stalking explosive device.

The movie was hit — huge enough that, when "Rawhide" was cancelled the following year, Eastwood was relieved. Now, he could concentrate on movies, and did, with two sequels for Leone, "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

Yet the films’ singular style — and star — made them ripe for parody. People joked about the jangly Ennio Morricone music but mostly about that stone-faced actor, "Squint Eastwood"; Leone himself cracked that his hero had two expressions, "one with the hat, and one without."

Leone’s movies had made Eastwood a star — something he quickly parlayed into an American Western ("Hang ’em High"), a big-budget war movie ("Where Eagles Dare"), and even, disastrously, a musical ("Paint Your Wagon.") But Eastwood needed someone to move him to the next level.

He found him in Don Siegel.

Sudden impacts

A veteran of B movies, Siegel had already directed some great ones, including "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "The Line-Up." He also became the first director to star Eastwood in a contemporary American setting, in "Coogan’s Bluff," and to push him outside his comfort zone, in the sensual "The Beguiled."

But with "Dirty Harry," he made him a movie hero for the modern age — mocking, murderous, fractured, fierce.

Like "A Fistful of Dollars," the script already had been turned down by other stars. But Eastwood liked it — and now that he had the power to produce, he chose Siegel to direct. The two men shared a fondness for professionalism, a weakness for gritty action and an impatience with pompous liberal pieties.

Their new film was tightly edited — Siegel began his career doing the montages for "Casablanca" — but it was even more tightly wound.

Like "Shane," Harry did the jobs that needed doing; like the marshal of "High Noon," he did them alone.

But like Ethan Edwards of "The Searchers," he was also emotionally wounded. And just as you had wondered who was really more savage — Edwards, or the Comanche he chased — you also had to wonder, as a seething Harry hunted down a madman, who was most likely to spin out of control.

It was a character Eastwood would return to many times, under different names. The most experimental was "High Plains Drifter," a story of almost biblical justice; the most successful was "Unforgiven," an elegiac film about duty and honor; the most unusual was "Gran Torino," a story about revenge that ended, surprisingly, in Christian sacrifice.

And it is no coincidence that all three were directed by Eastwood himself.

Million dollar babies

Eastwood had wanted to direct from the time he sat around on "Rawhide," watching the TV hacks break every scene down into long-shot/two-shot/close-up. He knew he could do it better, and he was happy to watch Leone, and learn from Siegel.

He finally made the leap with the shocker 1971 "Play Misty for Me." And the results since then have been consistently — mixed.

That’s blasphemy in Hollywood. The studios revere any man who consistently brings his pictures in under budget; most stars appreciate a director who gets what he wants in a few takes. (Those who don’t — like Kevin Costner — don’t work with Eastwood again.) He’s twice won Oscars for directing, for "Million Dollar Baby" and "Unforgiven."

Yet for years Eastwood’s directing jobs ("The Gauntlet," "Firefox," "The Rookie," "Absolute Power," "True Crime," "Space Cowboys") were undistinguished. Even his best films are often visually dull (the searing crane shot of a distraught Sean Penn in "Mystic River" is a rare exception) and dully scored (with Eastwood himself supplying the music). The praise for his artistry sometimes seems reflexive, a result of his legend.

What’s truly fascinating about Eastwood’s direction lately is what he chooses to direct.

This is a star, after all, who built his entire career on playing the heroic vigilante, the violent avenger. Yet "Mystic River" is a movie about the mistake of taking the law into your own hands; "Gran Torino" is about pacifist self-sacrifice; "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima" are about the brutality of war (and the humanity of our enemies) and "Million Dollar Baby" is about an old man’s fatherly support of a young woman’s dreams.

The real Dirty Harry would walk out on these movies.

Yet these are the pictures that Clint Eastwood is interested in directing today, and the themes he now burns to explore — regret, forgiveness, friendship. His latest film? December’s "Invictus," which stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela — and tells the story, not of old South Africa’s brutality, but of the new nation’s attempts to bind its wounds.

They are not the sort of movies we might expect from a man who once seemed like an old-fashioned macho caricature — emotionally shuttered, politically incorrect and proudly chauvinist.

But then, Clint Eastwood is a far more complicated man than any of us ever expected.

And so, perhaps to his own surprise, is the world he lives in.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED“American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood” ($25.99) is available in hardcover from Harmony Books. “The Clint Eastwood Star Collection” ($24.99), which includes the three Sergio Leone films plus “Hang ’em High,” debuts on DVD Tuesday from MGM.